Reunion
by Wrong Name Tag
Summary: Lily returns to the Muggle world to visit her sister, Petunia. The welcome isn't as warm as she hoped. Please R&R.


_November, 1979_

It had been so long since Lily Evans had to wear normal clothes that the Muggle jeans and the lacy shirt, even the styled brown down coat (her mother said it matched her eyes) and the boots that reached her knees, felt foreign. They pushed in at her skin but dragged her down to the ground as she stood on the stoop of number four Privet Drive. A new dusting of snow glazed the walkway and baby icicles dangled from the barren bushes underneath the living room window.

There was nothing to look at but the quiet street on a Friday afternoon, the snow that clung to the edges of her auburn hair and turned it ice, and the dark, heavy wood of Petunia's front door.

Maybe this was a bad idea.

Lily stepped back on the doorstep and breathed in once, twice.

Her sister; that's all.

She reached her hand out without stepping closer, quickly rapping on the door and stuffing her ungloved hand back in her coat pocket. She saw a finger separate the blinds in the lighted living room, a lock of blonde hair pass across the foggy window pane, and then nothing.

No movement, no one calling out that they were on their way, no dimming of the telly that had to be playing inside the house that had the normal, black smoke stretching up into the bloated sky.

"Oh, come on, Tuney!" Lily called, and beat her knuckles against the front door again.

_Tuney._ She didn't feel like _Tuney_ anymore. She felt like Vernon Dursley's wife, Mrs. Dursley, Mrs.-

Normal.

"Tuney!" Lily called out and she stepped closer to the door, trying to make her voice heard through any cracks in the well-kept home. "Please, open the door."

Lily would have given anything in that moment to pull the wand from where it hid inside her jacket and magic the door down. She would explain to her sister that she wasn't so different, though the jean material made her skin itch and the lace on her shirt made her sneeze. The coat was more frill than warm and the boots-she felt like she was walking in heels, something she never did. She would explain to her sister that robes were quite comfortable, like their old Christmas service costumes.

The telly got louder and Lily could make out distinct voices on the Muggle news.

_"There was an unexpected electrical fire on the Underground this afternoon and authorities are still looking into the death of the three commuters found hanging on the platform shortly after the halt in transportation. Suicide has not been-"_

Lily winced at the _electrical fire_ and beat her fist stronger against the door. The wood hurt and she felt she could splinter it open with her frozen knuckles. The child inside of her, the version of Lily who still romped around the Evans' backyard and made snow angels with her sister, they wanted to hurl snowballs at the perfectly cleaned windows until Petunia came to the door.

But she didn't have forever. She wished she did.

Lily sighed and leaned against the doorframe, attempted to raise her voice above the sound of the telly. "Tuney, you're being ridiculous." She breathed in, deep, and the cold hair settled the anger rolling inside her stomach. "Mum told me. This morning. That you're pregnant." Lily heard fingers separate the blinds and close them again, and she ventured on. A little more softly as the telly became muted inside what could only be a manicured home.

"I am too."

The blinds separated again, behind her, and when Lily didn't hear the sound of them closing-

she turned around.

Lily turned around and, for the first time in four years, she looked at her sister. Petunia's face was as thin as ever, her blonde hair perfectly curled and it hugged the angles of her face. Her eyes wouldn't meet Lily's, but she looked at a spot above her shoulder and waited.

"July. Mum said you're due in June." Lily shrugged and watched Petunia through the window, though there was nothing to watch. She could just look at the growing lines around her sister's still-young face. Lily saw the perfect curves of her pink mouth, the uncertain placement of Petunia's hands against the window.

Petunia's hands shook and Lily said, "I hope they'll know each other. You know-"

Lily's heart dropped to the tips of her square-toed boots as the blinds clamored shut and the telly crescendoed into a commercial for Ribena.

But there was nothing to do and Lily turned in her tracks into the pillow of snow on the front step, and looked at the empty street. It was the white quiet of falling snow, the muted sound of clouds frosting the world for Christmas.

And on the ignored doorstep, on the empty street, Lily reached her hand into the silly jacket her mother made her buy, and swished her wand until she apparated from her spot and to someplace warmer.

Mrs. Dursley looked out the window at the sound of a ipop/i and saw only the tiny marks of boots in the quickly accumulating snow.

They'd be buried and forgotten by sundown.


End file.
